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Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests hold photos of themselves at the age they were sexually assaulted by Catholic Clergy. CCR sought an investigation of the Vatican by the ICC, for its role in the violence.

In 2003, in the landmark decision Lawrence v. Texas , the United States Supreme Court declared that state statutes that criminalize sodomy are unconstitutional. In its sweeping decision, the Supreme...

Jane Doe v. Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and Anwar Haddam is a lawsuit brought in December 1996 by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the International Women’s Human Rights Law Clinic (...

Monell v. Department of Social Services is a case in which the New York City Board of Education awarded compensation for female employees who had been forced to take maternity leave. This case, which...

NOW v. WABC-TV is a lawsuit in which the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of NOW challenged the license renewal of WABC-TV in New York City on grounds of sexual discrimination. In the...

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) took on the case of Hess v. Schlesinger in 1973 because it concerned the treatment of women as an extension of their husbands. In this case, CCR challenged...

Coker v. Georgia is a lawsuit in which the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, together with a broad range of other women's legal organizations, on...

Since the 1970s, combating sexual and gender-based violence has been an integral part of CCR’s mission. We fought for recognition of the right to self-defense for victims of domestic violence, winning the first ever appeal of a murder conviction on these grounds, and helped to strike down New York State’s marital rape exemption. We helped successfully advocate for the recognition of rape and sexual violence as war crimes and forms of torture and even genocide in international tribunals and commissions. The Center’s most recent work against sexual and gender-based violence is our effort to hold high-ranking Vatican officials responsible for widespread and systemic rape and sexual violence by clergy. With our partners at the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), CCR filed a formal request for an investigation by the International Criminal Court; our subsequent advocacy involved work with several U.N. committees and resulted in the Vatican being summoned for the first time ever and sharply criticized by the U.N. Committee Against Torture and the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child. In the year after the ICC filing, SNAP was contacted by survivors and supporters in more than 70 countries.

News

Donald Trump has sustained more than his fair share of political losses during the first 10 months of his presidency, mostly at the hands of the federal courts. It was the federal courts that struck down his “ Muslim travel ban ” on three separate occasions, that blocked his ban on trans people in...

The Vatican isn't doing enough to protect children - that's the sentiment from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and the Center for Constitutional Rights. The two advocate groups wrote to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, calling out the Holy See for failing to meet a...

The Vatican missed a Sept. 1 deadline to submit to the United Nations a report, detailing the steps it has taken to protect children from sexual violence, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a Sept. 5 statement. Guam, where more than 100...

Opinion Pieces

This is CCR's weekly "Frontlines of Justice" news round-up, keeping you in the loop about what we've been up to and what's coming soon. Check it out every Monday, your one-stop-shop for CCR opinions, news coverage, reports from court appearances, upcoming events, and more! CCR fights the pipelines...

Last night, CCR was proud to count our staff and partners among the incredible people and groups inducted into the inaugural Gender Legacy Wall—including the late Rhonda Copelon , former CCR vice president; the late Barbara Blaine , friend, colleague, and client; and Senior Staff Attorneys...

This is CCR's weekly "Frontlines of Justice" news round-up, keeping you in the loop about what we've been up to and what's coming soon. Check it out every Monday, your one-stop-shop for CCR opinions, news coverage, reports from court appearances, upcoming events, and more! Two years after Ashker v...